Extended OCL for Goal Monitoring

Monitoring human-computer interaction aids the analysis for understanding how well software meets its purpose. In particular, monitoring human-computer interactions with respect to a user's goal model helps to determine user satisfaction. By formalizing a goal model, runtime monitors can be automatically derived. The REQMON system monitors the satisfaction of goal models. Recently, an OCL compiler was developed for REQMON. The OCL was extended slightly to address temporal and real-time constraints. Now, goal models can be represented in the extended OCL, from which runtime monitors can be compiled. The resulting REQMON system appears to be easier to use comes the abstract

Definición de métricas para la complejidad de expresiones OCL de forma metodológica

Dado que los diagramas de clases constituyen ”la columna vertebral” del desarrollo de software orientado a objetos (OO), han surgido muchas propuestas de métricas para medir atributos internos de su calidad como la complejidad estructural, el acoplamiento, el tamaño, etc. Pero ninguna de las propuestas existentes considera la complejidad añadida a los diagramas de clases UML al incorporarles expresiones escritas en el “Object Constraint Language” (OCL). Es bien sabido que el lenguaje OCL realmente enriquece a los diagramas de clases ya que los complementa a través de expresiones que especifican propiedades semánticas del modelo, mejorando la precisión del sistema, su documentación, y su comprensibilidad en etapas iniciales del desarrollo. Esto es lo que nos llevó a definir un conjunto de métricas para la complejidad estructural de las expresiones OCL considerando sólo aquellos elementos de OCL que se ven implicados en técnicas de “tracing”. Consideramos que las técnicas de “tracing” afectan en gran medida a la complejidad cognitiva y a la comprensibilidad de las expresiones OCL, lo que afectará al mantenimiento de los diagramas de clases UML. El principal objetivo de este artículo es presentar el estado de trabajo de investigación que se está desarrollando como parte de una tesis doctoral, poniendo especial énfasis en el proceso metodológico utilizado para la obtención de métricas válidas.Eje: Ingeniería de SoftwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Interactive Distributed Knowledge Support for Conceptual Building Design

In our project, we develop new tools for the conceptual design phase. During conceptual design, the coarse functionality and organization of a building is more important than a detailed worked out construction. We identify two roles, first the knowledge engineer who is responsible for knowledge definition and maintenance; second the architect who elaborates the conceptual design. The tool for the knowledge engineer is based on graph technology, it is specified using PROGRES and the UPGRADE framework. The tools for the architect are integrated to the industrial CAD tool ArchiCAD. Consistency between knowledge and conceptual design is ensured by the constraint checker, another extension to ArchiCAD

A Formal and Tool-Equipped Approach for the Integration of State Diagrams and Formal Datatypes

International audienceSeparation of concerns or aspects is a way to deal with the increasing complexity of systems. The separate design of models for different aspects also promotes a better reusability level. However, an important issue is then to define means to integrate them into a global model. We present a formal and tool-equipped approach for the integration of dynamic models (behaviors expressed using state diagrams) and static models (formal data types) with the benefit to share advantages of both: graphical user-friendly models for behaviors, formal and abstract models for data types. Integration is achieved in a generic way so that it can deal with both different static specification languages (algebraic specifications, Z, B) and different dynamic specification semantic

Semantics of OCL specified with QVT

The Object Constraint Language (OCL) has been for many years formalized both in its syntax and semantics in the language standard. While the official definition of OCL's syntax is already widely accepted and strictly supported by most OCL tools, there is no such agreement on OCL's semantics, yet. In this paper, we propose an approach based on metamodeling and model transformations for formalizing the semantics of OCL. Similarly to OCL's official semantics, our semantics formalizes the semantic domain of OCL, i.e. the possible values to which OCL expressions can evaluate, by a metamodel. Contrary to OCL's official semantics, the evaluation of OCL expressions is formalized in our approach by model transformations written in QVT. Thanks to the chosen format, our semantics definition for OCL can be automatically transformed into a tool, which evaluates OCL expressions in a given context. Our work on the formalization of OCL's semantics resulted also in the identification and better understanding of important semantic concepts, on which OCL relies. These insights are of great help when OCL has to be tailored as a constraint language of a given DSL. We show on an example, how the semantics of OCL has to be redefined in order to become a constraint language in a database domain